Compulsive Overeating

Compulsive overeating is an eating disorder than can easily be characterized by an "addiction to food". Just like with any other addiction, the person suffering from compulsive overeating will have a constant craving for food and he will consume a lot more than he requires because of this.

A lot of people tend to confuse compulsive overeating with binge eating, which is a similar, but graver eating disorder. Binge eating is also characterized by uncontrollable feats of overeating, but the main difference is that binge eating is much more emotionally and psychologically dependant than compulsive overeating. For example, a person with compulsive overeating may feel joyful after a meal, satisfied of the quality of the food, although he knows he exaggerated with the amount he ate. Persons suffering from binge eating on the other hand, will eat as uncontrollably and as much as the ones suffering from compulsive overeating, but they will feel an additional sense of guild, depression and disgust towards their own persona due to the fact that they could not control themselves and of the thought that the last particular meal will have grave affects on their body image (although one meal won't really make that much difference, but in their depressive state binge eaters tend to exaggerate on the effects). Because it lacks these depressive periods, compulsive overeating is considered less dangerous than binge eating, since it has a reduced chance of turning into bulimia. However, compulsive eating can easily turn into the binge eating disorder if its effects on body weight and shape will have an impact on the individual's emotional and psychological status.

The causes for compulsive overeating can be similar to those of binge eating, namely of emotional nature (most addictions are emotional or psychological in nature actually). Just like smoking, it's oftentimes not the body that craves the cigarette, but the mind. The case of compulsive overeating is similar. Some sufferers of this eating disorder use food as a self-medication to get over their daily problems and this habit quickly turns into an addiction. On other occasions, a person that has been emotionally abused (someone who has recently experienced a harsh breakup with his or her spouse for example) will overeat with the sole purpose of getting fatter, making them less attractive thus less likely to be abused on another occasion. The last category of compulsive overeating sufferers includes people that are extremely skinny (either because of their natural structure or because of a secondary condition they are suffering from) and are ashamed of how THIN they are. In their urge to get to an average weight, they overeat and turn it into an addiction.

The fact that compulsive overeating can hardly be separated from binge eating at times makes it even harder for medics to diagnose one of these eating disorders with 100% efficiency. Regardless, both conditions need to be treated as soon as the first signs appear, since they can lead to serious damage to one's body and can also be the springboard for some graver eating disorders such as bulimia.

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